Objetivos del sistema de protección de las invenciones.

Transnational marriage as a tool: love or gain?

In the first sections of the thesis I discussed the possible motives of Russian women for migration to Finland. But in this part I would like to give a deeper insight in the stereotypical and stigmatized image of such unions. In general, this chapter is devoted to the stereotypical visions of Russian immigrants in Finland, and on the other hand, the visions of Russian women on the process of their integration and adaptation, as well as their characterization of Finnish culture and society. Additionally, this chapter is devoted to the intimate side of the transnational couples - I attempt to reflect upon the construction of relationships between Finnish husbands and Russian wives in connection with mutual expectations through the narrations of the latter.

[So I got acquainted with a Finn in the Internet. It happened in 2002, I was alone with my child, and I had a very strong feeling of loneliness. So the Internet gave me communication, you understand. (Smiles). I met a Finn there and I started to learn and read about Finland, about “fairytale”. So I had a Finnish pen pal friend and something was going wrong with him and he introduced me to his friend‘s friend, which later became my husband. It was in 2003. In 2003 he arrived in Saratov to me with his stuff. ] [Nina, 51]

***

[So my ex-husband is 58 years old now. I worked in the little shop and my life was going wrong. I wanted to have a child, and men …you know, there is no wish to have a child from such type of men (in Russia). I started to observe the men who were coming from Finland. So, the result is three and a half years and one and a half year of divorce. It is not like everybody think: “Wow, she lives abroad, she is in chocolate.” […] We were looking the common points for a long time. We met in Petrozavodsk, he came to my shop. And I thought that, actually, this man is not bad, I was thinking- maybe I have to get acquainted, and that time I was thinking about the child. Well, he came to my shop and I fed him. And he called me with him to move to Finland and we were looking for the common points for a long time. ] [Slava, 44]

***

[D: How did you meet your husband? Did you have an aim to move here or not? G: I had no purpose to move.

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G: In Tampere, yes, I have been here on vacation. I was thinking for two years if I really want to move here. When I was on holiday, I liked everything.

D: You liked?

G: Yes, being on holidays. But I am already in my ages, and I thought that it would be very difficult with the language and so on.] [Galina, 54].

The idea of true and pure love in a transnational marriage seems more unreliable and blinded by factors of economic gain and mobility possibilities after the marriage. The above first extract may resemble the idea of aspiration for better living standards and possibilities, whilst the last two extracts demonstrate that the reality of living and moving abroad is not so cheerful and easy. At first, may be Slava desired to move to Finland for reasons of better prospects, but she soon realized that a life with a foreigner is not an easy task, not to mention all the challenges of social adaptation and her lack of Finnish. The same happened with Lyudmila, whose experience was described in the beginning of the work. If the assumption of the aspirations of Russian women to move abroad and “catch” and marry a foreigner is true, then why was Galina thinking for two years if she really wanted to move to Finland. Thus, the stereotypical images of Russian women and their aims of migration often generalize migrants without any attempt to look at it a broader perspective. It would be wrong to generalize the groups of female migrants in Finland as the motives of immigration may be caused by different reasons. For instance, a Russian woman, who is well-educated and from a middle class family also may migrate abroad, but in this case her reasons for the migration would differ from stereotypical assumptions. The purposes of migration also can be different, including career opportunities and academic work. Once, being in a company of Russian and Estonian they stigmatized me as a Russian prostitute, who came to Finland in order to find a Finnish husband. In the talk with them I explained that I have been a Master’s student in Finland, who was doing the research on the topic of transnational marriages, they were laughing and said: ‘Hah, it is good to write with your own experience.” (With irony). I said that I do not have experience of relationships with a Finnish man and all my research is based on the interviews with Russian women. But returning to the issue of the perception of Russian women in Finland, in this case we may see, that even the “native” groups of Russians consider their female comrades as “prostitutes” and “hunters’ for the economic gain and better life in Finland. Thus, it is obvious why Russian women’s behaviour in Finland could be called as defensive.

73 Global hypergamy

Constable (2005) noted that marriage mobility supposes the movement of brides from a less developed country to the more advanced and wealthy location – from the less developed south to the more developed north (p.10), this phenomenon is marked by the author as a “global hypergamy”. It is an interesting phenomenon as it may involve women and men around the globe. Certainly the aspiration for economic gain and mobility possibilities underpins the marriage market, the globalization and differences in standards of living – all these factors facilitate marriage migration. Constable (2005) underlined that the notion of “hypergamy” provides the questions for “how, for whom, and in what sense such marriages represent upward mobility” (p.10).

Freeman claimed that the mobility caused by marital reasons is contradictory: “marital mobility entail a number of paradoxes, including those of nationality/ethnicity, gender, geography, and economic class” (in Constable, 2005, p. 10). Migration is considered more often as “female” than “male”. Besides, the common assumptions surrounding the bride’s poor economic condition and low status are incorrect, as well as the assumption about potential foreign husband who has a better economic position (ibid.). Many women today in Russia have high social statuses, even in comparison to Finnish men. Many Russian women who migrate abroad, including Finland are well educated and originate from good families.

[I: Look, I am from Leningrad, from an intelligent family anyway, well… D: Were you born in Leningrad?

I: Yes, it is already the 6th generation. Leningrad…My Polinka (daughter) is the 7th generation already yes. And the last - my grandchild already is a Finn and the second grandchild is Finnish as well. So, I was living there as an intelligent person in Leningrad…always theatres, museums…I was growing up in museums…] [Inga, 62]

In the case of Inga, whose experience has been described several times before, we may see that the contrast of her living standards was not so strong in contrast to Lyudmila (mentioned before), as Inga married on a Finnish husband who was reliable and prosperous. I may suppose that if Inga would not marry a Finn, she would live Finland and would come back to Leningrad, however, she also could stay and as she said she could “fight for the place in the sun”.

Continuing the topic of the status, I asked my interlocutor what she thinks about the loss of the status upon move to Finland:

74 [D: Well when a woman moves does she loose her status? G: She loses, yes. In one moment. ] [Galina, 54].

Returning to the question of the status change, I would like to emphasize that a Russian woman who had a good socio economic position before migration may turn into a low status individual after migration to Finland where she suddenly lost all her qualification and professional recognition. This idea sounds opposite to the idea of “gaining” status as Bryceson and Vuorela (2002) which described, that women can gain the status of independence and breadwinner, here, on the contrary, women become economically and even morally dependent on the Finnish husband, which makes him feel dominant.

Moreover, returning to the problem of the lack of opportunities in labour market for newly arrived migrants and low salaries paid due to the lack of demanded required qualifications and skills, according to Finnish standards, the migrants find themselves “caught” in the trap of unemployment and low wages:

[Yes, yes, it is not beneficial to work. Here I worked before, resigned in April-March, I went to Russia for 4 months […]. They do not allow you to earn, then they can allow you to work as part time, but they hire “their people” for the full time jobs and if they hire you as a full time then it is about a limited number of hours. If someone is sick there is the same. The wage is on the level of social money that is all what you get. […] I look at my husband’s salary and it is five times higher than mine and the work time is for eight hours and the salary is higher, and I thought that maybe I just need to change a job. And I worked as a cleaner, and I have a good characteristics, it says that I can do everything, but I do not have a diploma of a cleaner, so it makes it difficult.] [Galina, 54].

***

[D: Are there a lot of opportunities in Finland? Have you met barriers on the labour market or somewhere else?

K: Well yes, you just reach a dead end, I also thought that you can do everything here but it is not like that.] [Katerina, 34]

As we see from the narrations of Galina and Katerina, still, they feel the deficiency of opportunities and feel marginal in the context of labour market. Unfortunately, this places migrant Russian woman in a position of being dependent on her Finnish spouse. Still, Constable (2005) underlined that very often, that a women who migrate because of the reason of marriage, marry on a high status man, wealthy and rich (p.11). However, as the author claimed that the social and economic status of men also may vary (ibid.). Several of my interlocutors repeated this idea in the interviews:

[D: What about the status (social level) of the person, how do you think, only a particular level of men is ready to marry on a Russian woman?

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S: The status is very important here as well. So yes, probably…although the cases are different. But Finns in general, those, who marry on Russians they are…do not know…the middle class, do not know.] [Slava, 44]

***

[The social level is important, there is a cultural level also, also there are “simple” people who do not know what it means – to present a flower, of course it is better to buy a glass of beer [irony], and yes it is like that. So do not try to change, to put it in his head. ] [Inga, 62].

Thus, the social and economic statuses of Finnish men who marry on a Russian woman also may vary. In the case of Inga, her husband was an educated person, who worked as an engineer, sometimes abroad, and in the case of Lyudmila he was a part-time worker, who drunk constantly and did not want to work:

[He is ready to take care for me for the whole day…everybody who saw him they say – say “hello” to the best men on the earth, do you understand? And he is in all that…that means love, real love…and this is the substitution of notions…and all other things we are calling “love”. […] We are married for 28 years – there is no a rude word for these 28 years, there wasn’t any shout from him, it means I live how I want to live Daria, and I wanted to move to Tampere, we have a cottage in Huittinen, and suddenly something changed. I just was travelling and it was like just “enough”, I just wanted to move to the city. So, he bought this flat for me, I have my own world here, do you understand? My energy…that what it means – a Finnish man.] [Inga, 62].

***

[He had fun with women in front of me – so once he broke my arm when he was drunk. He just wanted to drink further. I turned him into human creature …I came…before me he has been nothing, the pants were hanging, he was unshaven, the clothes was not ironed…and now he walks and boasts, dressed immaculately, perfumed, “I am a king”, and women are hanging on him without any knowledge what he represents in reality. He escaped the work, he was sitting for several month without a job, he had problems with leg, but still, he was all right already. […] He loves only himself. He dresses himself, loves only himself and buys everything for himself. He broke my arm once being drunk. ] [Lyudmila, 55]

Thus, it is obvious that the examples of Inga and Lyudmila are absolutely different, and the socio and economical statuses of their husbands differ. Thus, as Constable (2005) noted, the potential foreign spouses can be poor according to the local standards that is why they seek for a wife from a poorer area (p.11). However, as it turns out in practice that Russian women may bear a higher status than Finnish men. Moreover, such disadvantageous economic position of a Finnish man (as for instance in Lyudmila’s case) may indicate the “step-down” for Finnish husbands in contrast to their Russian wives (ibid.). That is why Constable (2005) put in question in what case then the marriages can be considered as hypergamous (ibid.).

Constable (2005) also claimed that the marriage can be built on the ground of transnational fantasies of foreign spouses, how they shape their transnational desires, imaginings and traditions (ibid.). Also the scholar called the cross-border marriages as “marriage-scapes” and

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claimed that they are bounded by cultural, social, historical and political contexts (p.4). Other scholars (Mahler ad Pessar) have called it the “gendered geographies of power”, that reflects the transnational perspective of mobility (ibid.). All these transnational movements and increased mobility resulted in the construction of the gendered patterns of migration (ibid.). Additionally, it is interesting to regard how the gender settings influence women in the condition of their different social and economic condition with the spouse before their marriage and after. Thus, gender works in multiple spatial and social scales (body, family, state) despite the transnational location (Pessar and Mahler in Nolin, 2006, p.35). Pessar and Mahler attempted to embed gender into transnational focus, pointing out three important elements: “geographical scales, social locations, and power geometries” (ibid). In turn, power geometries are meant to explain how people distribute their power in unequal social relations (Nolin, 2006, p.36). Besides, Nolin (2006) stated that in order to understand the lives of migrants in the right manner, researchers must be aware of gender differences and monitor the categories that are meaningful both to women and men (ibid.).

It is well known that female migration is intensive in contrast to male migration, however, Inga dismissed this argument:

[I: Daria, but the stigma really exists…yes, on all Russian women and men also by the way… D: But is it expressed on men less?

I: No. You just do not know. (Laughs) I have for example my Finnish friends women they are married Egyptians, and men move here as well.] [Inga, 62].

Thus, we may see that it is impossible to generalize the migration trends upon the factors of social status, motivations and gender perspective. The migratory processes are constant and fluid, with on-going process of globalization of today, changing gendered mind-sets and gender roles and behaviour in the conditions of different locations to generalize the groups of immigrants according particular assumptions would be wrong and easy. There is a need for deep insight into a particular case, and an individual case, which allows us to at least try to find answers on the question what makes Russian women to migrate and marry a foreigner in Finland (or any other country).

“Good character like good soup is usually homemade”18

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The topic of Russian women’s motivations to marry a Finn was also investigated by a Finnish scientist Pelljanen (in Heikkinen, 2013, online). Among all listed characteristics of Russian women which are rather critical (Pelljanen stated that Russian woman marries a Finn in order to obtain a Finnish citizenship, or that they look for men abroad only because the Russian men drink a lot), she concluded that for Russian women the important things in life remain family, motherhood and upbringing of children (ibid.). However, as it was discussed in the theoretical part, the change of the status in the context of motherhood and mothering practices can also be considered as a serious transformation for a Russian woman’s gendered practices when she marries a Finn. The author found out that in the mixed families of Russians and Finns the women take a bigger responsibility for children than fathers, but she added that Finnish fathers provide a good care for the children in contrast to Russian fathers (ibid.):

[L: A Finnish woman does not do anything, fathers run for the children, cook and so on. D: Russians will not behave like that.

L: Yes, true.][Lyudmila, 55] ***

[D: And in Finland it is usually the father who takes care for children?

S: Yes, fathers are engaged in activities with children. The model comes from mother and plus the community is absorbed with the idea of family life.] [Slava, 44]

***

[D: But I heard and even saw that fathers who devote their all free time to their families.

K: Well yes, Finns also have a lot of hobbies. They are fond of many things and sometimes they even can skip something and children are lost, parents are just irresponsible sometimes. Although yes, as you said, fathers are active about upbringing of children, it is a domination role in the family and they are busy with kids. Also they do not share children, even if they divorced, then still they spend equal time with children, but may be the mother spends more, yes.]